Rail Trail
The rail line has not been repaired since the damage and termination of service in 1971, although 90 percent of the line remains intact as of 2009. In 2005, SEPTA provided a 30-year lease to a local group called Friends of the Chester Creek Branch, who have proposed converting the line into a rail trail between the dormant Lenni Station and the town of Upland. As of 2010, government grants have been awarded for the first phase of the trail project, and engineering design work is underway.
SEPTA still retains ownership and has the right to restore rail service if need be, but the odds of this happening are doubtful. Byron Comati, SEPTA’s director of strategic planning and analysis, said SEPTA has never sought reclamation and a rail trail’s growing popularity could preclude this.
“To the best of our knowledge after our discussions with SEPTA, there are no plans in the future to restore rail service to the Chester Creek Branch,” said Mike Fusco, president of The Friends of the Chester Creek Branch. Comati concurred that "SEPTA has no plans, long-range or otherwise, to reclaim the Chester Creek Line right-of-way for public transit use. Rails-to-trails success stories exist in Delaware County, and there are several other examples of former right-of-way that have the potential to become trails in the future."
Read more about this topic: Chester Creek Branch
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Puffing as you climb, you are a brown woodcut
stooped over the thin rail and the wornout tread.”
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Making a new twilight”
—William Stanley Merwin (b. 1927)